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[[!meta copyright="Copyright © 2007, 2008, 2010 Free Software Foundation,
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*IPC* stands for *inter-process communication*.
On [[Unix]], inter-process communication can be achieved using pipes.
This is inefficient for large amounts of data as the data must be
copied. This is generally not a problem as most services are
provided by the Unix kernel and Unix is not designed to be
[[extensible|extensibility]].
[[Microkernel]] systems, on the other hand, are generally composed
of many components. As components are separated by their respective
[[address_space]] boundaries, unlike the kernel, they cannot arbitrarily
examine and modify the caller's state. The advantage is that if the
protocol is carefully designed, the callee cannot cause the caller
any [[destructive_interference]] thereby removing the need for the
caller to [[trust]] the callee thus reducing the former's [[TCB]].
When done systematically, this can increase the system's [[robustness]].
To this end, microkernels provide richer IPC semantics that include
the ability to transfer [[capabilities|capability]] and to use [[virtual_memory]]
[[mechanism]]s to copy data.
Continue reading about [[Mach's IPC system|microkernel/mach/IPC]].
# See Also
* [[RPC]]
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